Wednesday, November 28, 2012

“Being under pressure alters how different areas of the
brain communicate. In a nutshell, the prefrontal cortex works less well and
decouples—or stops talking to---other brain areas that are important for
maximal cognitive horsepower. When a
particular brain area stops communicating with other areas, this can have dire
consequences for our thinking and memory capabilities.” Sian Beilock, Choke

Some people are more prone to worry, anxiety and self-doubt
than others. As if these vexing feelings of inadequacy and lack of competence
were not enough, the mental performance of these individuals is also negatively
impacted.

According to Sian Beilock, an expert on cognitive science at
the University of Chicago, a person suffering from worry will have diminished
cognitive function. Specifically, the working memory of the self-doubting
individual will be impaired, simply because they are perplexed with worry and
anxiety.

When a person is overcome daily by worry, fears of failure
and self-doubt (stressors to the brain) the prefrontal cortex of their brain is
less able to communicate with other regions of the brain when performing cognitive
tasks. It’s as if just the mere presence of worry shuts down the normally fluid
connections between the various portions of the brain and the individual ends
up with fewer mental reserves to draw from when performing intellectually
demanding tasks. The anxiety-riddled person is truly at a disadvantage.

Sian Beliock discusses a very interesting study. Generally
speaking, students with higher working
memory tend to be more prone to worry and anxiety during tests whereas
students with lower working memory
experience less anxiety and worry during tests

It isn’t clear why people who score higher on tests of
working memory are more prone to worry (especially during test-taking situations).

Could it be that individuals with higher working memory take
things more seriously, internalizing test scores as diagnostic of their ability,
which ends up creating an influx of worry? These students unwittingly create a
“do or die” situation in their brain and worry intensifies. Once worry and
self-doubt enter the brain, cognitive performance declines.

For those of us who are chronic worriers…self-doubters…it is
very crucial to make efforts to work through this. The book highlights the importance of
venting—verbally expressing how one feels or, even better, writing down how you
feel. You need to find a way to prevent
feelings of worry and inadequacy from entering. Because, once these feelings arise, they direct mental energy away from important cognitive
functions—like coming up with a creative idea, performing well on a test, or
playing a musical piece to perfection.

It is also a very good idea to avoid and actively ignore
negative, critical people if you are a worrier. After all, you already have to
deal with the harsh criticisms regularly generated by your own brain, you don’t
need additional help from other people.

What's the good news? According to Beilock, for those of us
continually plagued by worry, we are not performing at optimum cognitive
capacity and there is GREAT room for improvement. (However, if you are not a
worrier, you are probably already performing at your optimum cognitive
capacity.)

Saturday, November 17, 2012

“The amount of pleasure and satisfaction we derive from
experience has as much to do with how the experience relates to expectations as
it does with the qualities of the experience itself.” The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz,

Are many people unhappy these days due to the surfeit of
choices? Developed nations are richer and offer their citizens more choices
than at any other time in human history.
The internet offers us access to unlimited information, entertainment and
things to spend our money on. Arranged marriages are becoming increasingly rare.
Some grocery stores offer as many as 30 different types of jams and jellies. Yet, despite so many choices, depression is on
the rise in developed nations and people seem to be remarkably disappointed by
many (or most) of their daily experiences and the choices they make.

As Barry Schwartz puts it in his book “The Paradox of
Choice”

“If I’m right about
the expectations of modern Americans about the quality of their experiences, almost
every experience people have nowadays will be perceived as a disappointment,
and thus regarded as a failure—a failure that could have been prevented with
the right choice.”

Choices for education, careers, kitchen appliances and
partners abound. Having many choices increases a person’s expectations of what
is possible for them. This may set the individual up with such high expectations
that almost any choice they do make, ends up being a disappointment in
comparison to that amalgamated mental expectation that they had derived from
all those choices they were exposed to.

I see it like this: When you have a lot of choices it
results in you inadvertently summing up all the good qualities from the gamut
of those choices. At this point, you
have the expectation that someone or something (job, career, education, mate,
sex, kiss, hobby, dinner, fluffy cat, etc) will amount to your new, heightened
expectation of it. If the person/thing/event is even just slightly less than your expectations, you experience emotionally
negative feelings of disappointment and sometimes, bouts of depression.

If you live throughout every day with such high
expectations, don’t plan on ever being extremely happy; plan on being regularly
disappointed. The key to happiness is lowering your expectations and relating your experience to a situation that could be worse (not better). This
action creates gratitude because then you are happy about your situation,
realizing it could be much worse.

Happiness doesn't necessarily require fewer choices, but it
does require the ability to modulate our expectations of those choices. If you are one of those people who frequently
says, “I’ve heard/seen/had better” you probably have high expectations and frequently
experience disappointment/boredom/and/or lack of contentment in your life.

The more choices you have the more opportunity costs come at you, assault you, and niggle at your mind. You may have been okay or happy with the one
choice presented to you—but, when you have a bunch of choices presented to you
and you make a choice, the choice that you do
end up making becomes difficult (and less wonderful) because you are evaluating this choice in light
of the other choices that were also available. You begin to reflect upon what
you lost from not choosing any of those other choices. Disappointment ensues.

According to the Barry Schwartz, high expectations (due to choices) and disappointment is very common--most people think in this way. The good news is that we can change this kind of thinking by resorting to downward
couterfactuals. Downward counterfactual thinking is conjuring up states of existence that
are worse than reality. So...basically...lower your expectations?